Shane Murray, Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions

Today’s ground combat vehicles are being outfitted with an increasing number
of onboard electronic subsystems, all of which want to be interconnected via
the platform’s local Ethernet network. The problem is that as more and more
network traffic gets generated between these subsystems, the threat of network
congestion increases, resulting in unacceptable performance degradation and
slowing the transmission of critical data to the destination(s) that most need it
as quickly as possible. Worse, if only a Layer 2 switch is used for directing network traffic instead of a Layer 3 router, the users will lose the ability to apply
network management controls that help eliminate the threat of network congestion and provide security rules that prevent network traffic from reaching
off-limits network nodes.